Chapter Text
“Oh my god ,”
Kurt groaned and ran a frustrated hand through his hair as he stared at the monster of a Christmas tree his boyfriend had brought into his house.
Blaine cocked his head as they inspected it, “It’s okay! We can trim it! It’ll be good as new,” he smiled nervously.
“Blaine, it’s touching the ceiling.”
Blaine huffed and flopped back onto the couch, sulking - arms crossed and bottom lip sticking out like a little kid who’d been told they couldn’t get a toy at the store. Kurt smiled down at him and shrugged off his coat before cozying up next to him. He watched his grumpy face, trying to hold back the smile pulling at his cheeks, knowing it would aggravate him even more. After a moment, he playfully tapped at the boy’s nose, “Don’t furrow your eyebrows like that, you’ll get wrinkles. And you’re too pretty to be frowning like that.”
Blaine’s face softened as Kurt gave him a sweet smile and began playing with the little hairs poking out of the gel at the nape of his neck. “What’s the matter, honeybee? It’s just a tree. We’ll get another one,” he said softly.
Kurt instinctively took a hold of Blaine’s hand when he noticed him nervously fidgeting. He leaned on the back of the couch, waiting patiently for him to gather his thoughts. He always needed some time to work through his feelings in his head before he could talk about them.
“It’s just that I wanted our first Christmas living alone together to be perfect. And the real tree was my idea and it looks ridiculous and it’s way too big and there are pine needles all over our apartment and…” Blaine trailed off, looking at the floor in defeat, “I feel like every time I try to do something nice for you, it turns into another mess of mine that you have to clean up.”
Kurt’s heart twisted at the words. He laid a soft hand on Blaine’s cheek, who didn’t move from his position. “Hey,” he ventured, “sweetheart, look at me.”
Blaine lifted his head and turned to meet Kurt’s eyes. The pitiful look on his face made Kurt want to just wrap him in a hug and never let him go. He reached out his other hand to cup his boy’s cheeks. Blaine gave him those sad little puppy eyes that could make even the hardest person go soft.
“Baby, listen to me. First of all, our first Christmas here is gonna be perfect just because you’re with me. I don’t need anything else. I promise,” he spoke as Blaine listened intently, looking at him as if he hung the stars. Like he always looked at Kurt.
“Second of all, it’s our job as partners to help clean up each other’s messes. You’re not the only one who makes them, either. You’ve cleaned up plenty of mine,” he took a small pause as Blaine grasped at his arms, trying to hold his hands. He pressed a gentle kiss to the tip of his nose before locking their hands together again.
“I could care less about the stupid tree, hon. We can pawn it off to Rachel to put in her fancy dressing room at work,” he said, causing a little grin to appear on Blaine’s face for the first time since they’d walked in the door that evening. “There’s that beautiful smile!” Kurt adored how his cheeks still got rosy from simple compliments like that after all this time.
“You don’t need to do things for me to love you, Blaine. There aren’t conditions on my affection. You know that, right?”
Blaine bit his lip in an attempt to keep the tears welling up in his eyes from spilling out. “I know. I guess I just forget sometimes. I’m sorry," he stopped to think on his next words for a second, "Sometimes I just look at everything you've done for me and think there's no way I can ever compare."
Kurt shook his head, "Don't ever think that. You've changed my whole world, sweetheart. You are the best and most important thing in my life and you always will be. You hear me? Always and forever."
Blaine could swear his heart swelled in that moment. “I love you so much,” he beamed up at Kurt. Kurt’s sunshine.
“I love you too,” Kurt wrapped him in one of their tight hugs - the ones that could express all those big emotions that neither of them were too good at talking about. He rubbed Blaine’s back softly and let out a deep breath, soaking up all the comfort he received from Blaine’s head tucked so tightly into his neck that they couldn’t get any closer if they tried. Blaine had always been much more physically affectionate than Kurt was, but he loved it just as much as Blaine did.
Eventually, they’d ended up with Blaine’s head on Kurt’s shoulder and his legs across his lap, snuggled up in a mess of blankets that had been draped across the back of the sofa. Kurt had tugged off the jacket that Blaine had never taken off and shuffled around tv channels until he found one doing a Christmas movie marathon - one of Blaine’s favorite things in the world. They relaxed for a while in silence until Blaine burst into a fit of giggles all at once. “Why would I think getting a nine-foot tree for our little shoebox New York apartment was a good idea?!”
Kurt couldn’t help but join in on the laughter. “Honey, I don’t have a clue,” he ruffled Blaine’s hair and pressed a loud smooch! on the top of his head, pleased that his silly boy was too lost in his giggles to realize what he was doing and swat his hand away. “We’ll get a new one tomorrow, preferably one that doesn’t require the topper to be our ceiling,” he teased.
“I’m an idiot,” Blaine chuckled.
“You’re my idiot.”